A Comparative Analysis of Gnostic and United Church
Theologies

By
Carman Bradley

Orthodoxy,
the English equivalent of Greek orthodoxia
(from orthos, “right,” and doxa, “opinion”) means right belief, as
opposed to heresy or heterodoxy. The
term is not Biblical; no secular or Christian writer uses it before the second
century, though orthodoxien is used
by Aristotle. The word expresses the
idea that certain statements accurately embody the revealed truth content of
Christianity, and are therefore in their own nature normative for the universal
church. This idea is rooted in the New
Testament insistence that the Gospel has a specific factual and theological
content and that no fellowship exists between those who accept the apostolic
standard of Christological teaching and those who deny it. Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth:

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the Gospel I
preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your
stand. By this Gospel you are saved, if
you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Otherwise, you have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

Do not be yoked together with
unbelievers. For what do righteousness
and wickedness have in common? Or what
fellowship can light have with darkness?
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an
unbeliever? What agreement is there
between the temple of God and idols?
For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I
will be their God, and they will be my people.
Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord” ( 2 Corinthians 6:14-17). [Note: NIV Study Bible footnote states, “For
Corinthian believers to cooperate with false teachers, who were really servants
of Satan, notwithstanding their charming and persuasive ways, is to become
unequally yoked, destroying the harmony and fellowship that unite them in
Christ.”]

At
Colassae in Asia Minor, Paul met with perhaps the gravest heresy threatening
the early Church. This was the
syncretistic blending of Christianity with theosophical elements drawn from the
mystery cults and partly from heterodox Judaism. According to Henry Chadwick author of The Early Church this heresy belonged to the general category
commonly labeled “Gnosticism.”[i] This is a generic term used primarily to
refer to theosophical adaptations of Christianity propagated by sects which
broke with the early Church between 80-150 A.D.. The term Gnosticism is derived from the ordinary Greek word for
knowledge (gnosis). The second century sects claimed to possess
a special “knowledge” which transcended the simple faith of the Church. The Gnostic initiate was taught to
acknowledge no responsibilities.
According to Kurt Rudolph, author of Gnosis:
The Nature and History of Gnoticism, the traditional Church accused the
Gnostics of deceit and falsehood declaring the supernatural cause of Gnostic
teaching to be Satan himself, who sought to corrupt the Church.[ii]

Gnostic
tradition frequently drew its material from varied existing traditions,
attached itself to them, and at the same time set it in a new frame by which
this material took on a new character and a completely new significance. This “anything goes” theology was anathema
to the early Church, as it should be today.
The period between 150 and 250 A.D. was evidently a high point in the
debate between the Christian church and the Gnostics. According to Kurt Rudolph, there was no “Gnostic church” or
normative theology, no Gnostic rule of faith nor any dogma of exclusive
importance. No limits were set to free
representation and theological speculation so far as they lay within the
framework of the Gnostic worldview - that God is forever unknown. In all but one sect, there was no Gnostic
canon of scripture (authorized text).
In libertine sects, the adherent was seen as a new kind of person who is
subjugated neither by the obligations nor the criteria of the present world. Historian H. Jonas writes that the Gnostic
in contrast to the orthodox Christian:

…is free from the law - in a quite
different sense from that of the Pauline Christian - and the unrestrained use
of this freedom is not just a matter of a negative license but a positive
realization of this freedom itself.
This ‘anarchism’ then was stamped by a ‘determined resentment against
the prevailing rules of life,’ and by ‘obstinate defiance of the demands of the
divine cosmic powers who are the guardians of the old moral order.[iii]

Gnosticism
culminates in the assumption of a new unknown
God, who dwells beyond all visible creation and is proclaimed the real lord of
the universe. Gnosticism is a religion
of self-redemption, one is already redeemed, all that is necessary to achieve
salvation (freedom) is knowledge. The
Gnostic gospel, Thomas 22, reads:

When you make the two one, and when you
make the inmost as the outermost and the outer as the inner and the above as
the below, and when you make the male and female into a single unity, so that
male will not be only male and the female will not be only female, when you
create eyes in the place of an eye, and create a hand in the place of a hand,
and a foot in the place of a foot, and also an image in the place of an image,
then surely will you enter the kingdom[iv].

Gnostic
redemption is deliverance from the world and the body through wisdom, not as in Christianity from sin
and guilt by Christ’s atoning sacrifice.
That the Christian Gnostics considered themselves to be Christian and
not pagan, and were using the name, severely vexed their ecclesiastical
rivals. Rudolph writes that the Church
Fathers commented on the Carpocration Gnostics:

[They] are so abandoned in their
recklessness that they claim to have in their power and to be able to practice
anything whatsoever that is ungodly (irreligious) and impious. They say that conduct is good and evil only
in the opinion of men…according to their scriptures they maintain that their
souls should have every enjoyment in life, so that when they depart they are
deficient in nothing.[v]

Subsequently,
the Fathers of the Church simply traced the rise of Gnosis to the devil. The classic formulation of this view was
made by the father of ecclesiastical historiography, Eusebuis of Caesarea (ca.
264-339), in his Ecclesiastical History:

Like brilliant lamps the churches were
now shining throughout the world, and faith in our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ
was flourishing among all mankind, when the devil who hates what is good, as
the enemy of truth, ever most hostile to man’s salvation, turned all his
devices against the church. Formerly he
had used persecutions from without as his weapon against her, but now that he
was excluded from this he employed wicked men and sorcerers, like baleful
weapons and ministers of destruction against the soul, and conducted his
campaign by other measures, plotting by every means that sorcerers and
deceivers might assume the same name as our religion and at one time lead to
the depth of destruction those of the faithful whom they caught, and that
others, by the deeds which they undertook, might turn from the path to the
saving word those ignorant of the faith.

According
to Chadwick, the Church’s defense against these anti-Christian forces was
threefold. The first defense against
Gnosticism was developed in the idea of orthodoxy through succession from the
apostles. Against any heretical claim
to possess new and varying revelations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there was
the clear argument that Christ would not have failed to impart such wisdom to
Peter and Paul and that these apostles would have shared such doctrines through
the line of accredited Church teachers.
The succession argument was key for two reasons. First, the faithful were thereby in some
sense assured that revelation was knowable as retrospective historical
fact. Second, it enabled defenders of
orthodoxy to oppose the proliferating Gnostic sects, with the concept a one
true church unanimous in its possession of an immutable revelation. The second weapon of orthodox defense was
the gradual formation of the New Testament canon. The controversy with the Gnostics gave sharp impetus to control
the authentic tradition which a written document possessed and which oral
tradition did not. The contemporary
version of these two defenses is to hold to the authority of the Bible over
abject revisionism. The third and last
weapon against heresy was the “Rule of Faith,” a title used to mean a short
summary of the main revelatory events of the redemptive process. The crux of the creed for polemical purposes
lies in the assertion of the unity of the divine plan from Old Testament to
New. Gnostic heretics did not believe
in the God detailed in the Old Testament and with their low valuation of the
Old Testament, were not interested in the fulfillment of prophecy. [Today Christian creedal statements still
have the value of anchoring the faith of adherents and exposing heterodoxy,
although the traditional creeds need to be augmented in detail to counteract
religious liberalism.]

There
is one single point, with which the orthodox can agree with the liberal
theologian Rev. Dr. John Shelby Spong: “it
matters how one thinks of God.”
Theology affects our faith and the theology of the UCC, to the extent
that it can be identified (and unmasked) is as unique from Christianity as
Gnosticism was found to be by the first and second century apologists. Moreover, UCC theology is the equivalent
threat to Christianity today that Gnosticism was to the early Church. Christians are called to confront heretical
doctrines and when the teachings persist, to separate from those giving false
witness. The “Rule of Faith” action
plan taken by the early Church is a sound model for dealing with apostate
denominations (and individuals) that falsely claim to be Christian. StandForGod.Org proclaims a
comprehensive Christian Worldview (as an augmented creedal statement) for
protecting the right faith in
contemporary times. It is crucial to
compare the extent of UCC apostasy with Gnosticism to recognize the deception
and danger existing within Canadian Christendom.

The
word “apostasy” comes from the Greek apostasia,
a late form of apostasies, originally
to desert a post or station in life.
Apostasy is a “falling away” to the revelation of the man of sin, or
Antichrist, a passing over to unbelief.
Apostasy is dissolution of the union with God subsisting through faith
in Jesus Christ. The risks of apostasy
are well documented:

But there were also false prophets
among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive
heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift
destruction on themselves. Many will
follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. (2
Peter 2:1-2)

If we deliberately keep on sinning [NIV
Study Bible: committing the sin of apostasy] after we have received the
knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only fearful
expectation of judgment and of raging fire that would consume the enemies of
God. Anyone who rejected the law of
Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man
deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has
treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sacrificed him, and
who has insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:26-29) [NIV Study Bible: to
reject Christ’s sacrifice for sins is to reject the only sacrifice; there is no
other.]

The
following table compares Gnostic and United Church theologies and
heresies. In sum the two religious
views share the following heresies: (1) denial of the Trinity; (2) denial of
the Bible as the Word of God and the final authority on matters of faith; (3)
denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ; (4) denial that Jesus Christ is the
only way of redemption; (5) denial of original sin; (6) denial of judgment; (7)
belief that all will be saved; (8) denial of the Law and replacement with liberal morality; (9) condoning
premarital, extra-marital and homosexual sex; (10) no normative theology; (11)
no limits set to the free representation and theological speculation; and (12)
condoning abortion.

Gnosticism

Heresy

United Church

Gnostics believed there was
revealed truth to be found in many religions.

There was no Gnostic church or
normative theology, no Gnostic rule of faith or any dogma of exclusive
importance.

No limits were set to the free
representation and theological speculation so far as it lay within the
framework of the Gnostic worldview.

Gnosticism was a mix from the
mythological or religious ideas of the most varied regions and cultures:
Greek, Jewish, Iranian, Christian, Manicheism, also East Indian.

Marcionism rejected the Jewish
Scripture (Old Testament) and its prophetic roots and connection with
Christianity.

When Gnostics recognize the
truth(s) they find the fruits of the truth in themselves. If they unite with it, it will bring
fulfillment.

Denial of the

Bible as:

the Word of
God, the final authority on matters of faith

--------

Romans 15:4

2 Tim. 3:16-17

2 Peter 1:19-21

‘I would want to question some of the conclusions
you reach from a platform of natural theology.’[vi] - The Right Rev. Dr. Peter
Short, Moderator, 2005.

Our society is multicultural, our world is multifaith;
our church community has varying theological perspectives within it. Some make exclusive claims to absolute
truth and find in these claims authorization to do harm…While believing that
our faith is grounded in truth, our truth need not deny the truths of others’ - Question of Truth, Faith Talk II.

Some will protest that we must have faith in the Bible, and that the
Bible takes an unfavourable view of intimate same-sex relationship. But I would answer that Christian faith is
not an uncritical repetition of a received text. It is a mindful commitment to the power of love, to which the
text seeks to give witness. ..In fact, change is the only medium in which
faithfulness can truly become faithfulness. Uncritical repetition is more like being on autopilot. – The
Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short, Moderator, 2005.

‘The United Church unequivocally supports the right
of same-sex couples to have access to civil marriage, it also unequivocally
supports the right of religious communities to refuse to perform such
marriages. The United Church does not
believe that the faith stance of a community which supports same-sex marriage
undermines the faith stance of a community that does not.’ - Choice Okoro, UCC Program
Officer for Human Rights

Gnosticism culminates in the
assumption of a new unknown God,
who dwells beyond all visible creation and is proclaimed the real lord of the
universe. This god is not the creator
of the material world.

Marcion taught that Jesus was a
man like any other, who was endowed with the Spirit by the true Father (not
the God of Israel) but the unknowable Stranger God. Marcion held that a
real divine Christ could not have taken on a material body.

Jesus Christ of Scripture could
not have been divine. Divinity can
not experience suffering.

Gospel of Thomas denies the
virgin birth and the resurrection.

The true and good God is unknown.

Knowledge is freedom.

Gnostic Gospels stressed
‘self-knowledge’ where to know the self is to know God.

Jesus is presented as the
revealer of wisdom and knowledge, rather than the source of salvation and
reunion with God.

Denial of the Trinity:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

--------

Matthew 3:16-17

Mark 1:10-11

John 14:16-17

2 Cor. 13:14

Titus 3:4-8

Denial of the

Divinity

of

Jesus Christ

(The soleWay, Truth and Life)

--------

Matthew 1:18-25

John 15:5-8

2 Peter 2:1-3

1 John 2:22

1968 -
New Creed - Jesus no longer declared Son of God, Saviour and Lord.

In ‘Roses Are Difficult Here,’ The Right
Rev. Dr. Short preaches on a non-relational deity: ‘…so much of the spiritual tradition falls into the unlikely…That
Jesus was born of a virgin....That Jesus was raised from the dead – not
likely…No use for the church to be condemning the modern world. No use launching into a diatribe against
technology, nor an indictment of consumer culture…The absence of God is not
caused by those things. The absence
of God is as old as the hills. Older.’[viii]

God is
not singularly known, adherents maychoose their own likenesses: ‘Our words, while necessary, are
limited. We sometimes make false gods
of them and use them to exclude or denigrate others. We therefore also speak of God: as
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; as God, Christ, and Spirit; as Mother,
Friend, and Comforter; as Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love.’ – Faith Talk II.[ix]

‘The Spirit fills creation in diverse ways and
makes the Divine knowable, not only to us but also to others. We understand faith as an experience
common to humanity, as a shared response to God’s self-giving; and we know
that our own and other’s expressions of faith are often distorted by
insecurity, intolerance and hatred. How others perceive God is often foreign
to our perception. The breadth of
Spirit calls us away from isolation to consider the Spirit’s freedom of
movement beyond our experience and, however our expressions of faith may
differ, to act toward all with the same love by which God acts toward us.’ - Faith
Talk II

Gnosticism is a religion of
self-redemption, one is already redeemed all that is necessary to achieve
salvation (freedom) is knowledge. Gnostic redemption is deliverance from the world and the body through wisdom, not as in Christianity from
sin and guilt by Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

For the Gnostic, achieving
gnosis (knowledge) meant to know oneself as God. But ‘to know’ meant not merely to understand one’s divine
origin, but to achieve the classic goal of the mystic: union with God. The idea that our souls are intrinsically
divine stands in sharp contrast to orthodox dogmas which stressed Jesus’
exclusive divinity. Gnosticism is
salvation through knowledge and self-discovery.

Each person is born with a seed
or spark of the Divine, a body and a soul. The divine spark - the God within - acts something like a pilot light,
sustaining the divine potential of the soul and body until the soul is ready
to be ignited, or awakened to gnosis. The awakened soul pursues union with the God within and this union is
salvation.

Denial of

Original Sin

--------

1 Peter 1:23

Romans 9:8-15

Denial of

Judgment

--------

Matthew 3:12

Matthew 7:21-23

John 6:44

2 Peter 3

Denial of Christ as the only way for

Salvation

--------

1 Cor. 6:11

Ephesians 2

Eph. 5:25-27

‘Before conscious thought or action on our part we
are born into brokenness of this world. Before conscious thought or action on our part we are surrounded by
God’s redeeming love.’ - Faith Talk II

‘In Jesus’ resurrection, God overcomes death,
reconciles and makes all creation new, faithful to what God in love has
created. Nothing separates us from
the love of God.’ – Faith Talk II

‘The Risen Christ lives today, present to us and
the source of our hope that nothing can hinder the Compassionate Love that is
the origin and end of all.’ – Faith Talk II

‘The Holy One promises that all will share in abundant life.’ - Faith
Talk II

Indifference to the risk of the
UCC same-sex marriage experiment: ‘This
is my job. I do it gladly and
enthusiastically, trusting that where we are wrong God will forgive…’[x] - Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short, Moderator, 2005

‘We know not when that hour (Christ’s return) will
be, many in our day seek such knowledge and false prophets lead many astray,
preaching a neo-apocalyptic gospel of smug triumphalism and the abandonment
of earth. We reject that false
gospel, choosing instead to love our enemies and to care for the earth,
choosing life…Divine creation does not cease until all things have found
wholeness, union, and integration with the common ground of all being.’ – Faith Talk II

‘Evil does not, cannot, undermine or overcome the
love of God. The essence of the
Divine enfolds and forgives, reconciles and transforms the results of
sin….With God’s help we turn from our sin and seek to be agents of God’s
healing and reconciliation. Repenting
of our closed minds and hearts, now we choose to listen to our neighbors in
faith, to respect them and the integrity of their understanding, to work
together for a whole earth of peace and justice.’ – Faith
Talk II

No Gnostic canon (approved
books) of their scriptures.

‘They are so abandoned in their recklessness that they claim to have
in their power and to be able to practice anything whatsoever that is ungodly
(irreligious) and impious. They say
that conduct is good and evil only in the opinion of men …according to their
scriptures they maintain that their souls should have every enjoyment in
life, so that when they depart they are deficient in nothing.’

Marcionism: rejected the Jewish Law (Old Testament) and the Jewish
notions of God in favor of the new idea of a God of love, divorcing
themselves entirely from the Jewish roots of Christianity.

Iranaeus, known as the First
Church Father, codified orthodoxy in his five-volume Against Heresies, characterized Gnosticism as a refuge of
perverts who held orgies, practiced promiscuity and homosexuality, aborted
fetuses and refused to bear children.

The libertine adherent was seen
as a new kind of person who was subjugated neither by the obligations nor the
criteria of the present world.

The Gnostic is free from the law
in a different sense then the Pauline Christian. The unrestrained use of this freedom bordered on anarchism - a
determined resentment against the prevailing rules of life and an obstinate
defiance of the demands of the divine cosmic powers who are the guardians of
the old moral order.

Denial of

The Law and replacement with liberal morality

‘Scripture is not too hard to live out, nor far off, nor in heaven,
that we should say, who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us that
we may hear it and do it. It is near
us, in our mouths and hearts, that we might do it, and so we are called to be
doers of the Word, and not hearers only.’ – Faith Talk II

[vi] Response
from the Moderator, The Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short, Letter to the Rev. Dr. Connie denBok et al., dated 10 February
2005, www.united-church.ca/moderator/short/2005/0210.shtm,
4/20/2005. Cornelius G. Hunter writes
on Gnosticism in Darwin’s God (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2001), pp.149 and 150: “The deity is absolutely transmundane, its nature alien to that of the
universe which it neither created nor governsand to which it is the complete antithesis…The world is the work of
lowly powers.” Hunter observes that the Gnostic’s belief in “lowly powers” was fulfilled in Darwin’s
evolution by natural selection - the theory that life was not divinely created
but developed by random chance and
selective survival of the fittest.
The acceptance of evolution, in turn reinforced Gnosticism in modern
thought. Hunter writes: ‘Two important themes are discernible in
the writings of Darwin and his fellow naturalists: Gnosticism and natural
theology(p.129).’ Wikipedia defines natural theology as theology based on reason and ordinary experience. It is distinguished
from revealed theology which is based on Scripture and religious
experience. Howard
Bloom, in The American Religion (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p.22, writes that Gnosticism is the most
common thread of religious thought today.
He calls it the ‘American
Religion’ and concludes: ‘even our
secularists, indeed even our professed atheists, are more Gnostic than humanist
in their ultimate presuppositions.’ Cornelius
G. Hunter records in Darwin’s God that
philosopher Michael Ruse observed that Victorians in Darwin’s time had trouble
with the idea that God created a natural world that often seemed devoid of His
presence. Ruse found: ‘Darwin is characterized as one held to some
kind of ‘deistic’ belief in a God who works at a distance through unbroken law:
having set the world in motion, God now sits back and does nothing.’ And Baker’s
Dictionary of Theology, Everett F. Harrison Editor-in-Chief, (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Baker Book House, 1960), p. 162, characterizes deism as follows: ‘Negatively, the deists generally denied
any direct intervention in the natural order on the part of God. Though they professed faith in personal
Providence, they denied the Trinity, the incarnation, the divine authority of
the Bible, the atonement, miracles, any particular elect people such as Israel
or the church, or any supernatural redemptive act in history… Denying
revelation and affirming natural theology only, they yet generally claimed to
be within the Christian tradition.’ [my underline]